Bypassing Your Corporate Firewall Filtering or How to Torture The Firewall Admin

I will first start off a couple disclaimers. I don’t do this at work, I don’t need to. I respect my corporate policies and completely recognize why they are there. This being a mental exercise that stemmed out of a misconception on how our local firewall works. I love the mental exercises on how I would do something and then drop it since I’ve essentially completed my goal and do not need to test it. If however you do feel the need to test this at your school or work I take no responsibilty for your actions. You are on your own and responsible for your own actions.

I’m also too lazy to give explicit step by step instructions on setting

Step 1.

You have two choices you need to decide on depending on your capabilities, either setting up your home computer to proxy for you while your at work or buying a cheap hosted website online. It all depends on if your ISP allows you to get to your home machine or if they block it. (Yes with a hosted it will cost you money but the link I gave you gives you your first domain for free). I would use a hosted solution personally.Step 2.

At this point I hope you have decided on which solution you are going to go with. Essentially the steps are going to be the same either way, configuration is on your head though. You are going to setup your web server to allow you to connect to it via SSL. This allows your communication to what your network administrator to see as a random web host to be encrypted. This means they will not be able to look inside the packets. The steps depending on operating system and web server capabilities is different in each scenario, so please Google to find how to setup an HTTPS web server for your desired operating system/hosting capabilities. You may need to setup a dynamic dns solution to get back to your home PC if you choose that route.

Step 3.

At this point you should have nice web setup that you can login into via SSL. What to host on the site? You need a site that can go out and fetch pages for you acting as a proxy within the web browser. Their are multiple solutions for this, and this is really is another step I’m not going to walk you through. This is the point where you are committed and going to violate corporate or school policy. If someone wants to right directions for it in the comments I won’t censor them, I’m just not going to be the one that explicitly tells you.

Step 4.

If you can figure it out now what you have is a random SSL that you can use to browse anything your network administrator doesn’t want you to. Sure you could have just used Google’s Cache, but then filtering software still could get contextual information about what your surfing based upon the words in the HTML code. This allows you encrypted anonymity.

What if the network administrator blocks access to my SSL site?

Well this shouldn’t happen unless you share the site with people. If you want your own private surfing enjoyment I would suggest keeping it to yourself. If however you kept it to yourself and you still get blocked there are a couple options to check.

Can you still get anywhere or has your Internet Access been removed?

If your Internet access has been removed do not pass go, do not collect 200.00, within the scope of this article I can’t help you.

Is it blocked by DNS name?

If it’s blocked by DNS name meaning that it’s checking to see if your going to www.bobssecretsslsite.com then you will have to use a new domain name with your hosting provider or a new dynamic DNS name. Yes this might cost you 6.95 (look for coupons through GoDaddy or another cheap hosting registrar, but you really want the Internet your way unfiltered right? If not why are you still reading this, commitment and freedom are not free.

Is it blocked by IP Address?

Well if it is your almost screwed, you need to either get another hosting provider or hope your home computer (if you using that approach) has a random DHCP that will reset when you power cycle your modem.

What if you looks at my Internet Cache?

This is really how they will catch you. There are a few choices you can do. The first is set your browser to clear your Internet Cache every time you log out. This will leave behind file traces if they use undelete utilities on you, but these steps is for the overly paranoid. If you are worried the your network administrator is browsing your temporary Internet Files looking for porn.jpg or some such you have two solutions. The first is using a USB drive and firefox portable installed on that USB drive. This allows you to take your browser whenever you leave your desk.

If your company has a policy banned USB device and you don’t want to break a second policy on top of the one you have already broken, download truecrypt. Follow truecrypt’s step on setting up an encrypted partition. Install firefox portable into the encrypted partition. Now your whole browsing history is saved into an encrypted partition that only you have the password to decrypt.

For bonus points use a combination of truecrypt and the USB key. Encrypted data you can take with you that allows you access to your own web site that can allow you access past any web filtering software.

Warning

Your images are still theoretically stored in your computers memory so , if you computer generates a memory dump you could still get caught. Also some companies track the flow of information across their networks, theoretically this type of software can also see what you have in memory. These are the only real flaws I find in this scenario.

Bonus Round

For bonus points on annoying your network administrator who is overly happy about his web filtering solution. Create a new igoogle theme with a bit flesh you crop from a picture you have of someone’s arm and name it porn.job. Have this has the background in your igoogle theme. Double bonus points for making two more jpg’s, one for each corner of your igoogle them. A picture of Richard Nixon named d-ck.jpg and a picture of your cat name p-ssy.jpg. You’ll set of his filtering software everytime you go to google.

Have fun.

P.S.

If this sounds too geeky, too techinical, too complex, or pain in the butt……..then you don’t deserve this solution.